A civil servants’ group has written an open letter in which they came down heavily on the Centre as well as Uttar Pradesh government for failing to take action against the killers of a cop in Bulandshahr. The group also sought resignation of the Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath for the inaction.

The letter, signed by 83 former bureaucrats asked the civilians to come forward in a “crusade against the politics of hate and division – a politics which aims to destroy the fundamental principles on which our Republic is founded”.

“It is a measure of the rapid erosion of constitutional values that we, as a group, have felt a compelling need to speak out as many as nine times in the last eighteen months,” the letter from the bureaucrats read as quoted by NDTV.

The letter from the bureaucrats came in protest of the murder of Inspector Subodh Kumar Singh and another person on December 3 following mob violence for an alleged cow slaughter. The principal accused in the murder is right-win outfit Bajrang Dal leader. New agency PTI had reported that local BJP leaders wanted his transfer after they accused the inspector of creating hurdles for religious functions.

Going by the letter, the Bulandshahr violence is a direct message to the Muslim communities in the area that they “have to live in fear, accept their subordinate status and conform to the cultural diktats of the majority community”.

Assault on civilisation

“World over, in any civilized society, the killing of a policeman is a more serious offence than any other crime, because it represents an assault on the very basis of that civilisation,” the letter further read.

The letter was signed by several bureaucrats including former IAS officials and activists Aruna Roy and Harsh Mander, former foreign secretaries Shyam Saran and Sujatha Singh, former Prasar Bharati CEO Jawahar Sircar, former Planning Commission secretary N C Saxena and former Delhi Lt governor Najeeb Jung.

The scathing letter also blamed the Chief Minister saying he “refuses to acknowledge the gravity of the incident and its communal intent, condemn the perpetrators of violence or direct the police to take action against them but instead asks them to focus attention on those responsible for illegal cow slaughter”.

The ex-bureaucrats also lashed out at Prime Minister Narendra Modi. “Our Prime Minister, who is so voluble in his election campaigns and who never tires of telling us of how the Constitution of India is the only holy book he worships, maintains stony silence even as he sees a Chief Minister handpicked by him treat that same Constitution with sheer contempt,” they wrote.